On 3 January 2026, Donald Trump announced on social media that the US had invaded Venezuela and kidnapped President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, without even seeking congressional approval and against international law.
Last month, implementing an oil blockade of Venezuela, Trump demanded in a typically unhinged social media post that Venezuela "return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us."
The White House has announced the US intends to retain control of all sales of future oil production. Vice president JD Vance said, "We control the energy resources, and we tell the regime you’re allowed to sell the oil so long as you serve America’s national interest, you’re not allowed to sell it if you can’t serve America’s national interest."
Trump is also talking about more illegal military operations, threatening Colombia, Mexico, Cuba, and Greenland, and has announced the total withdrawal of the US from the UN climate process, along with 65 other international and UN bodies.
Delivering for his backers
Less than two years previously, in a meeting with oil industry executives, Trump had demanded they raise $1bn for his White House re-election campaign and promised in return that if he was re-elected he would remove all climate regulations and environmental restrictions on pollution to boost their profits. The oil industry in turn wrote out executive orders ready for Trump to sign when he regained power.
Venezuela's massive oil reserves
Venezuela is sitting on oil reserves of over 300 billion barrels - more than any other country in the world, even Saudi Arabia, and three times as much as US reserves. Unlike Saudi Arabia or the US, however, this oil is mostly ultra-heavy crude oil, comparable only to Canada's tar sands. Because it is literally like tar, it needs to be melted with steam to be extracted and then diluted with lighter oil so it can be exported.
The global insurance industry is a massive paradox. On the one hand, they are bearing some of the massive financial costs of climate breakdown, and have raised the alarm about increased disasters making some areas 'uninsurable'.
On the other hand they provide the insurance on which the fossil fuel industry depends, underwriting destruction now, and helping make this future inevitable. Campaigners have focused both on urging insurers to rule out specific projects - such as the East African Crude Oil Pipeline - and on adopting policies to rule out fossil fuel insurance. Researchers found that insurers restricting insurance to coal mines contributed to the shift away from coal in the US.
Not all insurers are equal though. The Boycott Bloody Insurance campaign has a table which rates insurers based on their involvement with fossil fuel companies, detention & surveillance contractors, military companies complicit in the genocide in Gaza and controversial weapons such as nuclear weapons. It also includes information (where available) about insurance companies' investments in these areas.
We joined trade unions and climate groups outside Parliament to demand that the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, stop prioritising shareholder profits and start funding a just transition for North Sea workers and their communities. The market-led approach to the energy transition is failing. Shareholder profits have been prioritised over affordable energy, adequate public investment and good, green jobs.
The coalition is calling on the Chancellor for an emergency funding package of £1.9 billion per year for North Sea workers ahead of the Spending Review. A funding package on this scale is urgently needed for oil and gas and supply chain workers to make the transition into renewable energy jobs, ensuring that workers and communities benefit.
The call is endorsed by the largest union representing UK offshore workers, Unite the Union, as well as the National Union of Rail and Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), and Aberdeen’s Trades Union Councils. 65 climate groups including Greenpeace UK, Uplift, Friends of the Earth Scotland, Oil Change International, Global Justice Now, Extinction Rebellion and Platform are also part of the coalition.
The £1.9 billion emergency funding package to create permanent, unionised renewable energy jobs and support the country’s oil and gas workers to transition into them is comprised of:
£1.1 billion per year to develop permanent, local jobs in public and community-owned wind manufacturing.
£440 million of further investment each year for ports, on top of the £1.8 billion already committed through the National Wealth Fund.
£355 million per year to develop a dedicated training fund for offshore oil and gas workers, with match-funding from industry.
The hot temperatures on May 1st across most of England and Wales were at least three times as likely due to climate change - and you can see that on the map below from Climate Central's Climate Shift Index.
This useful tool is not a straight temperature map - it shows how statistically unlikely temperatures would be if we hadn't heated up our atmosphere, land and oceans with fossil fuels.
You can see that there are extremely abnomally high temperatures in the Middle East, Pakistan, Afghanistan and western India, South East Asia, much of sub-Saharan Africa, and Brazil.
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And then you might wonder, "Why haven't I seen anything about these heatwaves on the news?" The truth is that record-breaking temperatures elsewhere in the world rarely get a mention in UK media, unless they are in southern Europe where many of us take holidays.
These records are broken so frequently that, in a way, abnormal heat has become the 'new normal'. However, this phrase is misleading if it is taken to imply that things will stay the same - unless we stop burning fossil fuels, the weather will continue becoming more extreme.
The articles below were originally published on the Greener Jobs Alliance blog.
The case for union involvement and retrofit as public works
The Retrofit for the Future Campaign, launched at an online meeting on 19th March, is a collaboration between the Peace and Justice Project, Fuel Poverty Action, community and renters’ union ACORN, and health professionals’ campaign group Medact. Detailed demands are set out on the campaign website, but in a nutshell they address three key areas:
A proper plan for developing a skilled workforce to carry out energy efficiency retrofits.
Protection for private sector tenants against evictions or rent hikes after retrofit work on homes.
Accountability to residents for the quality and effectiveness of work on their homes.
Climate campaigners and retrofit specialists have long pointed out the urgent need to address the UK’s leaky buildings (with homes currently contributing around 20% of territorial emissions), as well as the formidable task of building the needed skilled workforce, the inadequacy of training programmes that fail to equip trainees with a holistic understanding of the thermal dynamics of the building, and the dreadful health consequences of badly implemented retrofits resulting in cold bridges, damp and mould, too often with no redress for householders.
Furthermore, with the government increasingly leaning in to the rightwing framing of climate action as an unaffordable imposition on ordinary people, the case for a campaign that counters that by clearly articulating the synergies between climate action and good jobs, health, decent housing and lower energy bills becomes indisputable. However, as supporters we have some, hopefully constructive, points to make, relating both to the campaign demands and, connectedly, to the work of translating the common interest of workers, activists and communities into an effective campaign.
The UK's Royal Society was founded in 1660. Among its fellows have been numbered some of the most notable scientists in human history, such as Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein. Election as a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) is still a significant honour, for scientists who are not just eminent in their field, but have made a significant contribution to scientific knowledge.
To carry out groundbreaking scientific research, it is not necessary, of course, to be a nice person. However the Royal Society does have a Code of Conduct. It has not, apparently, expelled a Fellow in the last 150 years. But in August 2024 a group of 74 Fellows sent a letter to the President of the Royal Society, raising concerns about Musk's conduct and asking whether he was "a fit and proper person to hold the considerable honour of being a Fellow of the Royal Society".
The Royal Society's refusal to take action led in November to Professor Dorothy Bishop resigning as a Fellow, explaining her reasons for doing so on her blog.
Since Donald Trump's inauguration of President as the United States, Musk has wreaked havoc, taking a leading role in attempts to dismantle vital US government functions. This goes beyond even the concerns about his politics and support for the far right. As detailed below, his actions are causing massive global harm and include direct attacks on scientific research.
In September 2024, scientists and NGO representatives wrote to Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, calling on the government to pause plans to invest £1bn in carbon capture and storage to produce blue hydrogen (from fossil gas) and to capture carbon dioxide from new gas-fired power stations. (see coverage in the Guardian here)
One of the main concerns raised in our letter was that even if carbon capture is successful (and the technology has a dubious record) it cannot compensate for the upstream emissions from methane leaks, transport and processing of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the US.
A follow up letter expanding on some of the concerns was sent a month later, but it was not until 10th February that we received a reply from minister Sarah Jones at DESNZ (the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero). Despite waiting five months for this reply, it does not address the problem that the UK's current plans seem to rely on increased imports fracked gas from the US. These have very high associated emissions because of methane leakages during production and transport, and a significant climate impact.
We will continue to campaign on this issue. Last year the UK Supreme Court ruled that planning applications for fossil fuel projects must take into account 'downstream emissions' from burning the fossil fuels extracted. We believe it is just as vital that upstream emissions should be taken into account.
The right to peaceful protest is a fundamental human right, but it has been seriously undermined in the UK in recent years. The latest example of this is the arrest of the Chief Steward, Chris Nineham, and others at the recent Palestine Solidarity Campaign demonstration on 18th January and the subsequent bringing of charges against Ben Jamal, the Director of the PSC, based on claims which video evidence seems to clearly contradict.
The conditions which were imposed by the Metropolitan Police on the protest, preventing assembly at the BBC despite a track record of peaceful protests for over a year, are also concerning: they seem to rely on legal powers (a sweeping definition of ‘serious disruption’) that the High Court have previously ruled to be unlawful, but have been left in effect while awaiting an appeal.
The Joint Committee on Human Rights, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and many others have made clear that recent legislation and other changes to the treatment of protesters by police and in the courts are disproportionate and pose a fundamental threat to the right to protest.
We add our voice to those calling for the charges against Chris Nineham, Ben Jamal and others to be dropped.
We also believe these events, along with the treatment of peaceful climate protesters, further strengthen the case for an urgent overhaul of the law on protest. These include the raft of anti-protest legislation which was brought in by the Conservative government without any clear justification; the removal of the legal defence for protesters in court of ‘necessity’ or acting to prevent a greater harm; and the existence of a parallel system of private law in the sweeping use of civil injunctions. A Labour government, especially one led by a former human rights lawyer, should not be upholding anti-protest laws which are disproportionate, unjust, and breach human rights.
This year, it will be a decade since the Paris Agreement was signed. Yet fossil fuel emissions continue to rise, and the window to avert the worst impacts of climate breakdown is rapidly closing. At this critical moment, the re-election of Donald Trump as president of the United States seriously increases the grave danger we are in.
Trump’s presidency will have a direct effect by further increasing US emissions. If he pulls the US out from the Paris climate agreement, and potentially even from the entire UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the indirect effects may be even more disastrous. Trump is a figure who emboldens climate deniers, authoritarians and the far right. If the wealthy, polluting US walks away from global climate negotiations, it greatly heightens the risk of other countries doing the same.
We ask you to use your position as UK Prime Minister, firstly to urge Trump not to pull out of the Paris agreement, and secondly, to do everything in your power to maintain and repair the principles of collective global action on climate change, and ‘common but differentiated responsibility’.
This means the UK acting as an exemplar for a comprehensive, swift, and equitable fossil fuel phase-out: an end to new North Sea oil and gas drilling with a fully funded plan for workers and communities, alongside a comprehensive climate plan for the rest of the economy.
It also means the UK doing its fair share on climate finance. The pledge of $300 billion agreed at COP29 was entirely inadequate, targeting just a small fraction of the trillions needed, and it is highly likely to be delivered largely.as private finance and loans pushing countries deeper into debt. The UK must stand alongside developing countries challenging this, by increasing our direct contributions, implementing and demanding the highest standards of transparency, and unlocking domestic and international finance using the well-known ‘polluter pays’ principle.
Other disturbing measures included exiting the World Health Organization, and declaring a 'border emergency' paving the way to send US troops to the southern border.
News that Donald Trump's administration will withdraw from the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change is a heavy blow to our chances of averting climate catastrophe, but it comes as no surprise. It follows his withdrawal from the Agreement during his first term, as well as his threats to pull the US out of the Paris Agreement and the UN's Framework Agreement on Climate Change which is responsible for organising international climate negotiations. Nor do the threats to attack clean energy, which he called a "Green Energy Scam". His inauguration speech included his oft used threat to "Drill, Baby Drill" made during his election campaign.
